Night terrors are always the worst kind of remembering. Slight Whouffle.
This is set after "The Name of the Doctor"
There are possible spoilers (?) for "Asylum of the Daleks"
It begun after they had been to Trenzalore. After Clara jumped into his time-stream and righted everything the Great Intelligence had tried to wrong. Every defeat, a victory. Every death, another life replaced it. She had tried to make everything right. Tried to save the Doctor from dying.
But…
There were always consequences for things like that.
In return, every one of her echoes lodged itself in her mind. Unable to escape. They couldn't escape the fragile human mind. She lived thousands of years in a mere few hours. Her brain couldn't cope with the onslaught of memories and lives.
So now, she has to live with the constant terror of who she is actually. The lives have taken over her head, making her question reality. "Who am I? Where am I? How did I get here?" runs through her mind every day. And every night in the TARDIS, when she should be sleeping, she stays awake. Staring at the ceiling as she tries to force herself to sleep. Behind her eyelids, she sees previous lives and echoes of herself throughout time and space.
Every night, she screams in fear of losing her fragile grip of reality. She screams and cries at the same time, muffling them into her pillow as her fingers clutch at the sheets. So many lives, too many pasts and presents and futures. Too many times of what could've been and I should've- the sentence cut off as she sobs once more.
She's everything and nothing all at once in the dreams. She remembers all of her lives. A barmaid in Victorian London who also a nanny, fell to her death after a woman made of ice had dragged her down from a cloud. An explorer on the Starship Alaska, taken by the Daleks and converted into one of them. "Because the Daleks need genius," The Doctor said when they met. When she was forced to realize that everything was just an illusion…
The Doctor, the Doctor had been somewhat of comfort on these days. When everything is too much and her mind simply can't take anymore, so she cries out for The Doctor. He can save her. Extract her from the memories and bring her back to reality. Back to the TARDIS with it being bigger on the inside and secret library where she learned his secret.
He runs into her room, puts an arm around her. The scratchy tweed of his jacket is comforting for her, the faint scent of her failed soufflé stuck to his sleeve. "You're safe," he chants, repeating it like a mantra until she finally understands that's she's Clara Oswald and she's perfectly safe. "Everything's alright."
And he says nothing after that, feeling her relax against him. He gives her a small kiss on the forehead, fingers stroking her cheek. Then he gets up from the bed, hears her whimper as another nightmare takes over. Of course, he can't do anything about it, he could just catch her in the middle in her nightmares and try his best to comfort her.
The next day, she wakes up with red-rimmed eyes and flushed cheeks. As if she just finished with a recent bout of crying/screaming/questioning her fragile sanity. He notices her state of mind and stays quiet, sipping a cup of tea he just made. He offers her some, taking her arm and pulling her down to sit with him on the floor. She mumbles her thanks and drinks the tea, wincing at the heat so early in the morning.
"Where do you want to go?" God, his voice sounds so tired. But he doesn't need sleep, he's a Timelord; -they never sleep. She makes a small noise of protest, nowhere, she says.
And the conversation ends there, because if he pries, she'll get angry and retreat to her room.
"What did you see?"
She's silent, too busy with her tea.
"Never mind about that."
It's always like this so early in the morning, it's always awkward and filled with silence. It makes him want to do something, relieve the boredom.
So he takes her hand, a thumb brushing over her knuckles. "You're Clara Oswald. You're my Impossible Girl. Those lives, they are yours, but they're not you."
She looks up, stares at him for a couple of seconds before reaching out to hug him. His arms go around her and hug her back, he whispers reassurances into her hair and promises into her skin.
"Nightmares are rather powerful things," and she nods in agreement.
Because night terrors are the worst kind of remembering.